The Colorado Springs GazetteThe Gazette is Colorado Springs's most trusted source for breaking news, sports, weather, obituaries, politics, business, art, entertainment, blogs, video, photos.Save this content for laterSave this content on your device for later, even while offlineSign in with GoogleSign in with your Google accountSign in with FacebookSign in with your Facebook accountClose

COMMUNITY FORUM: All Limbaugh-Obama-Fluke scandal

AT ISSUE: The recent Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy stirred a lot of debate about contraceptives, insurance and women’s rights.

Disingenuous in your outrage

The politics of separation of people in this country into classes and turn them against each other is huge, on purpose and will grow as the election nears. The media and politicians separate women into mainly two groups, conservative and liberal. If you are a conservative woman, you have to put up with comments from talk show hosts like Bill Maher calling Sara Palin stupid and suggesting that her Down Syndrome child was the product of sex with John Edwards. Did Obama call Palin and coddle her? No, not a word of condemnation. In fact Obama’s PAC just accepted $1,000,000,000 from Maher, proving to him money is more important than morals.

Randy Rhodes, a liberal talk show host, said recently that conservative women don’t deserve to have ovaries. She said:

“You know, these women, somebody really needs to go repossess their ovaries. Really, truly, they have no right to them. They are fabulous, little organs and they have absolutely no right to be estrogen-bearing beings. Okay? Just cut ‘em off, let ‘em go through the hot flashes, let ‘em just sit there and complain about hormone therapy, okay? Just take the ovaries and get it over with... ”

Let’s not forget that Rush, Rhodes and Maher are all radio talk show hosts. Yes, what Rush did was wrong and in his apology he said that he had become like the left, descending to their level and that he regretted doing so.

So Rush has apologized for lowering the standards of his show down to his liberal counterparts, but where are the apologies of Maher, Rhodes or Ed Shults for calling Laura Ingram a “talk slut”?

If you are outraged only by a liberal woman being attacked and stand back and let conservative women take it in the ovaries from liberal talk show hosts or anyone for that matter, you are disingenuous in your outrage, are lapping up the state-controlled media spin on things and your politics are more important to you than humanity.

Roger Schroeder

Colorado Springs

A complete distortion

Despite loosely condemning Rush Limbaugh’s disgusting comments about Sandra Fluke, Pula Davis seems to have bought Limbaugh’s rhetoric hook, line and sinker by saying “[Fluke] seems typical of many young women in today’s world who feel entitled to a lifestyle many of us may not condone. She has no right to ask that other Americans pay for her choices.”

This is a complete distortion of both Fluke’s and the contraception coverage mandate’s intentions. Let me introduce Davis to some facts:

Her testimony was about a friend of hers at Georgetown who suffered from polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition that is treated by hormonal birth control. Her prescription cost $100 a month, and Georgetown refused to cover it. This debate is about the application of private money to private insurance plans, not taxpayer money to anything.

So who are these “other Americans” Davis is talking about besides the few who are in the position to offer compensation and are bothered by an imaginary violation of their “religious freedom?”

Contraception coverage ultimately lowers the cost of insurance premiums. This should be self-explanatory, because what sounds more expensive, a pregnancy with related doctor’s visits and tests, or a pill?

It seems that the only leg those against the mandate have to stand on are in derailing the conversation and distorting information.

Ayla Hendrickson

Colorado Springs

Let me answer you

In response to Peggy Benson asking where are my values, (“Where are your values,” Mar. 8). Let me answer that for you. They are in my home, with my children and in churches everywhere. Why are you so concerned with what a talk show has to say? Does not the fact that a woman standing in front of Congress asking for them (which is the taxpayers) to pay for her birth control bother you? Where are your values?

It seems from your article you have no clue what “feminazis” stand for. You make a racial undertone it is not about being white and conservative.

For the record, there are conservative women of all colors, we have the choice to listen to who we want. Nobody is taking women back 100 years (birth control was not available 100 years ago, it had not been invented) especially talk show hosts. No one is taking away anyone’s right to birth control. Seems you missed that point. It is already available (at low costs) to any woman that wants to pay for it.

We have Planned Parenthood that receives funding from the government. Are we now saying that is not working?

Let me ask you where your values are? We have reality TV that promotes sex, parting and drinking and revenge (Jersey Shore, Battle of the Exes, 16 and Pregnant, etc.) We have rap stars who promote raping women and killing police officers. Our public schools are failing our children. And you are concerned about Rush Limbaugh? Many others have said the very same thing or worse on TV. What’s your point? He is a talk show host.

Millions and millions of people are without jobs, more and more being put into the welfare system, gas is on the rise, food costs have gone up, the economy and the housing market is in shambles. Why are you concerned about what any talk show host has to say? He created a company with employees and they get paid and they have insurance.

Guess he is helping people find jobs, maybe more than the government.

Jeanine Fark

Colorado Springs

Should be a fiscal decision

In response to Anna Dinsmoor “The elephant in the corner” I partially agree with her premise. I certainly cannot put up a cogent argument to women being objectified, but I am more concerned with outcomes than with the morality aspect of who is responsible for birth control.

The decision for provision of free birth control for women and/or men should be a fiscal decision rather than a moral decision. Though we should be concerned about the moral implications you describe regarding promiscuity, those are family responsibilities not the government’s. Unfortunately, many of the young people (and some not so young) engaging in sexual behavior lack the abilities to plan, consider consequences, and inhibit impulsive behavior. Much of that is developmental and some of it is simply poor judgment. The outcomes of these behaviors are many children being born to those who are unable to care for them (at all or effectively) and the child welfare system becomes involved which is expensive.

Many of these children require additional therapeutic and educational services (more tax dollars). Some may end up in the youth or adult corrections system, which further drains tax revenues. Though I know it was very controversial when the Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade, the reduction in crime in the 1990s correlated with when those youth who were not born would have turned 18-21 years old. You can make your own interpretation of that data.

Though not the most morally satisfying preventative strategy, paying for birth control is significantly less expensive than the alternative.

Barry Schultz

Cascade

The hatred that spews

Considering how obnoxious Rush Limbaugh has proven himself to be, once again, why is he on the AM airways, not once, but twice daily in this city?

I have met many intelligent, conservative people here and cannot understand why this is tolerated.

Who listens to Rush — this person who claims to be the “Conservative Voice” making $57 million a year?

Obviously, that is not the average conservative in Colorado Springs he is the voice for.

What is sadder, still, is the hatred that spews from his mouth not only about women, but minorities and the poor, as well.

The one AM radio station I like to listen to is 760 AM, however, I can barely get it on my car radio and never at home.

It would be such a pleasure to have an intelligent, unbiased radio to listen, to as I travel around the city, instead of the garbage that comes out of 740 and 850 all day long.

Elaine Brush

Colorado Springs

Are you kidding me?

Pula Davis is wrong. Rush Limbaugh didn’t just use a bad choice of words — he did it for three days straight on his overhyped radio show. And The Gazette editorial board wants to claim fault on both sides?

How typical of the maniacs of the right who get spanked and profess no ill intention.

I listened to the testimony given by Ms. Fluke, once she was allowed to speak. She wants insurance to cover women’s health care. Period. No free pass to “for profit” entities like Georgetown University. They are either a school or a church, pick one. If they are a church, then no more federal money to support them and they can choose to not cover women’s health care, if they so desire. If they are a for-profit school and would like to have federal funds given to them, then they have to treat all employees and students equally.

The Gazette thinks young women who use contraception are trying to get out of the consequences of having sex? Are you kidding me? Where is the responsible man in all of this? Where is the culpable male body part in all of this? The consequences of sex lie only with women?

In 1912 women lined up in Brooklyn, New York at the very illegal storefront medical center started by Margaret Sanger to learn what rich women of the time did to prevent pregnancy. Sanger went to prison for telling those poor and impoverished women how to prevent every sexual act with a man from turning into a pregnancy. That would be called family planning, and it didn’t become legal in the United States until 1965.

You really want to return to those days? You really want to chastise women for using contraception? You really want to return to the ignorance of the dark ages in women’s’ health care? Please get a new editorial board. The current one has no place in the modern era.